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Canada Masters
The big news of the week is that 8th-ranked Themis Xanthos has gone doubles, ending the competitive phase of his singles career. He won 7 Masters, the '96 Australian Open, 7 500-level and 14 250-level events for a total of 23 professional titles. Along with fellow Cypriot Alketas Albanos, he'll seek glory on the team circuit from here on out.
This week, that meant the final spot in the quarterfinals was open to Johann Przalowik, a semifinalist here last year. There were no early upsets to the Top 8, and all of the quarterfinal matches were resolved in competitive straight sets. Particularly noteworthy was Oleg Urazov knocking off Cananis 7-5, 6-4 in the only win by a lower seed in the round. Urazov then went on to come within a hair of ruining the perfect season of Ben Faille. Their semifinal match had a scoreline of 6-7(3), 7-6(5), 7-5. Perhaps Urazov is finally coming into his own. In any case, Ene Caballero took a set from Leon Polychroniadis in the other semi but was then blitzed in the last two. Faille beat Polychroniadis 6-1, 6-4 in the final to maintain his unblemished mark.
Elsewhere ...
Sushant Srivastava won his first return to the futures level as expected. He's got a couple more to replace before he can take another crack at Challengers, hopefully before the end of the year although that'll be tight. Aparna Chandrasekharan suffered his first setback in some time, losing in the final at an FT2 in Australia. He'll stay at this tier for a bit, and continue working. Girish Raychaudhari is sort of in no-man's land. It's tough sometimes to find a decent JG2 to enter, JG3s are too low, and he's not yet ready for Amateur tournaments. It's a common lot for a player at his stage of development. He played another JG3 in Sokhumi, Georgia, winning easily. Just taking the matches to boost form and allow a few more weeks for training.
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